A mid-sized house, an enormous build
A mid-sized house, an enormous build. Nearly three years of back-and-forth.
The project began with a doubt: should we expand, and take out the garage? We deconstructed by trial, measuring what we would gain and what we would lose. In the end, the answer was to expand nothing. To work the house as it was, rather than wish it larger.
Three ways of seeing the same rooms — an engineer, a doctor in psychology, a designer. Months of exchange. Out of that meeting came a shared demand: a space both intimate and mature.
Each function got its own finish. Hardwood in the living room, black mosaic in the kitchen, and raw steel as the link between them — the step that bridges the two levels. Three materials, three uses, one logic of restraint.
The existing garage was opened up to gain space and let the light in. Outside, cedars; inside, black curtains close the rooms off when needed. The kitchen turns into a bar on party nights.
Wood and metal — sometimes raw, sometimes almost black. A heavy carpet runs across the upper floor and climbs the stairwell wall, turning the stair into a single black object. Real steel, very heavy, separates the stair from the living room. Doors built in one place, their handles in another. Gypsum worked to correct the structural challenges and, where they couldn’t be corrected, to make them disappear.
The lighting, drawn in the studio and built with Charbo: indirect, direct, spots, dim-to-warm — which changes everything. White quartz coffee tables veined in black. A black glass bar, glued with remarkable precision by craftsman Quinlan Osborne of Claste Collection. A piece of family art to bring the rooms to life.
